ELECTRONICS NOTEBOOK

ELECTRONICS NOTEBOOK; For Many, the Thrill Of the New Is Gone

By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN

Published: July 11, 1991

THEY are the dropouts of the electronic age.

Their eyes glaze over when they hear phrases like "eight times oversampling" and "bitstream D/A conversion." They tend to demur when asked their opinion of compact disks. And rather than contemplate store shelves stocked with compact disk players, laser disk players and combi-players, they keep their old equipment with its familiar dials and knobs and worn grooves.

They are made anxious by the announcement, expected today, of royalty agreements on the next wave of technology: digital audio tape, or DAT. As for the formats of tape and disk yet to come, bearing monograms like CD-I, CDTV, MD, DCC and CD-ROM, they will be welcomed in these circles with the enthusiasm typically reserved for a long, deep scratch across a favorite long-playing record.

During the last 10 years, the technology for the digital coding of information -- what used to be known as recording -- has been moving so fast that progress is no longer always praised. The compact disk has become the new audio standard, used in more than 30 percent of American households; but the worry, for many, is that the CD may itself be supplanted. Every new format that appears -- and they are appearing at astonishing speed -- is either a possible standard or a possible corpse, either the industry's salvation or a debacle like eight-track tape, quadraphonic sound and the Betamax.

So the electronic dropouts sit and wait.

Elaine Levy, 43, the manager of a legal firm in Brooklyn, has considered buying a CD player. "But I'm still confused about it," she said, "and I don't really have the time to study. I need a long time to understand it all before I plunk my money down." She bought a $100 radio and cassette player a few years ago, she said, "just to get us over the hump until we figure it out."

But the hump is growing. Has she heard of laser disks? "Not really."

What about DAT, digital audio tape capable of producing CD-quality sound on homemade recordings, which recently came on the market? "I've heard of it, but I don't know about it."

And CD-I, those digital interactive video disks, with special player, that are to be released this fall?

"Oh great," she said, "another thing I've got to worry about in the future."

But even those who have no such worries harbor utopian hopes that someday all the confusion will end and all the formats will coalesce.

Myrna Watanabe, a 42-year-old biologist in Yonkers, said a "computer-freak" friend gave her this advice: "Everything is going to come together, he tells me. Computers. Video. Audio. So just wait."

She likes what she called "state-of-the-art technology." But as the new formats proliferate, Ms. Watanabe is content with a 17-year-old audio system with no tape deck and no CD player.

Jules Spodek, 63, a judge on the State Supreme Court in Brooklyn, is an avid music listener with about a thousand LP's. He has even connected his VCR, stereo and television together in a home entertainment system. But he has no CD player and will wait to get one.

"I was going to buy a player this year," he said. "Then I read about the recordable CD's."

Recordable CD's, dubbed MD's (for minidisks), are to be released by Sony in late 1992. They will answer many people's complaints about the CD's lack of versatility. But MD's will also be totally incompatible with CD's, will not have the same sound quality, and are designed specifically for use with small portable players like Sony's Walkman.

Ron Somer, the president of Sony Corporation of America, said that such new formats should not confuse consumers. They are invented -- like eight millimeter videotape and DAT -- to fill needs in specific markets.

"It's up to us in the industry," Mr. Somer said, "to show which formats serve which purposes."

When recordings were first made at the turn of the century, there were two formats: the turning cylinder and the revolving platter. The latter won the battle and reigned supreme, turning at 78 revolutions per minute for almost 50 years.

Then there was a battle of two "long-playing" formats: 45 RPM and 33 1/3 RPM. The latter held sway for 30 years, until the beginning of the 1980's.

Now things change faster than the old 78's could spin.

According to Dr. W. Russell Neuman, who studies the social impact of new technologies at the Media Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, there is "information overload" in consumer electronics.

No sooner had the compact disk become established than talk began about DAT. No sooner had DAT finally come into the marketplace than Philips announced that it was developing another format of digital audio tape, DCC (digital compact cassette). Its advantage is "backward compatibility," as the industry puts it, meaning that the DCC players can also play ordinary cassettes.

In video, no sooner had the VHS videotape format beaten the Beta format in the marketplace than there came the eight millimeter videotape for camcorders and VCR's. And no sooner had that begun to reach consumers than other "new and improved" formats were introduced: S-VHS and Hi-Band eight millimeter.

Then the video laser disk began attracting attention. It requires its own player but offers far better picture quality than tape. And no sooner had it begun to make inroads than new sizes of videodisks -- 5- and 8-inch, in addition to the standard 12-inch -- were made available.

Now many companies are preparing to raise the stakes still further with "interactive" and "multimedia" formats. Commodore has just started selling CDTV; the player, connected to an audio and video system, plays ordinary CD's, but also other kinds, which might display the King James Bible or video games like Simcity on the television screen.

This fall Philips is to release CD-I. This interactive CD and video format, incompatible with CDTV, will play games, educational software like "Treasures of the Smithsonian" and ordinary CD's.

Sony and NEC are introducing yet another disk format to the consumer market, packaging CD-ROM disks and players to be used with personal computers, for about $700. Sony's package will include Compton's Family Encyclopedia, a world atlas, games and bilingual dictionaries.

And Nintendo has just announced agreements with Sony and Philips that may lead to two additional compact disc formats for playing video games.

There are great pleasures to be had in such an explosion of possibilities. But there are injured feelings in those left behind.

"I'm in another era," Ms. Levy said. The comforting thought is that at the current rate of format introduction, everyone else will be as well.

Photos: The prerecorded digital audio tape, shown here actual size, is now joining LP's, older cassette tapes and compact disks in American homes. (pg. C1); Smaller and smaller: a CD-ROM disk, above, for use with a personal computer; and a recordable compact disk, or MD, left, for a portable player. Both are actual size. (Photographs by Bill Aller/The New York Times) (pg. C8)